SONAR 8.5, I’m sure at some point, was to be SONAR 9. There’s an enormous amount of functionality in this release. But I think the surprise is some of the stuff that won’t necessarily appeal to the widest audio production audience. Here’s a DAW that’s adding unusual new features for arranging tracks, putting an integrated arpeggiator on every track, beefing up its step sequencer (really), and dumping a bunch of class LinnDrum samples into the package. Those are the kind of treats we like in these parts.

SONAR is really a “DAW” in the traditional sense. It does everything. It doesn’t hide features. Given a choice between taking something out and putting something in, it puts the thing in. It has a lot of knobs and buttons. There are positives and negatives to the approach – it’s the reason some readers of this site return to software on game machines that has more in common with early Amiga software. But if you like the feeling of a packed studio, a tool like SONAR can be terrific. As much as I love Ableton Live for sound design and live performance, I find myself returning to something like SONAR for arrangement.

Even with its competitors packing in features, SONAR 8.5 is a tool that really loves MIDI, just as other software focuses on audio. And it’s one of the best-performing tools around. Because it’s so well-tuned for Windows, that means you can drop it onto a wide variety of PC hardware without spending a lot of cash. Most importantly, it could be the first software on any platform that convinces you to try a 64-bit OS – just at about the time you may be doing a fresh install of Windows 7.

Here’s a first run-down of what’s new in 8.5 that I’m personally most interested in:

MIDI lovers, step sequence and arpeggiate away. Every single instrument loaded in SONAR now has a step sequencer, and every track an arpeggiator. The new step sequencer has a lovely pane for controllers, deep control over each step, and probability controls. It could be reason enough to give SONAR 8.5 a try on its own. And yes, this does indeed take SONAR into FL Studio territory – but with a more conventional DAW bringing those kind of features together. FL users probably won’t be impressed, but if you longed for FL-style pattern sequencing but wanted to maintain an existing DAW, this could be for you.

Drum sound goodies. Session Drummer 3 has long been a nice virtual drum tool, and now improves routing and mixing to come closer to what it feels like miking a new drum. But let’s skip the acoustic kits and get straight to the electronic ones: yes, there’s an 808 and 909, as you’d hope given Cakewalk is now “Cakewalk by Roland” but there’s also a 707, a 727, and a Sequential Circuits Drumtraks and Linn Electronics LinnDrum. Oddly, you still have to look at a picture of a photorealistic drum kit – I’d like to see a visual representation of that LinnDrum, please. But it’s nice to have these sounds, unless you have a really big budget for eBay. There’s 2.5 GB of content, but I’ll skip to these files if I can.

Easier-to-edit audio. I gave Apple deserved props, I think, for making Flex Time’s implementation in Logic 9 elegant and allowing squishing of audio materials around. But what frustrated me about their tool was that you couldn’t take your warped audio and do other stuff with it. AudioSnap 2 could blow it out of the water. SONAR had this going before, but I frankly found some of the selection tools and interface a little off-putting. The UI has now been cleaned up, the Transient Tool makes it easier to grab trasients in your audio, and selection looks better. You can do tempo detection, mapping, and syncing, so that this is useful not only for smooshing around your recorded audio but also mapping it to a tempo. And most interestingly, the transients you find in Audio Snap can be integrated with the new Step Sequencer. There are also audio fidelity improvements for working with vocal, reed, and brass instruments.

A Media Browser brings files together. MIDI patterns, audio loops, grooves, and such can now be dragged-and-dropped into one place. That’s not a new idea, of course, but having custom presets for different locations is a welcome improvement (and why is it so hard to get other browsers to do that)?

A new way of improvising arrangements, “Matrix View.” A cell-based interface for non-linear triggering of audio and MIDI clips sounds like Ableton Live. But think of this more as an alternative way of trying out arrangement ideas. Because it loads from RAM only and not from the hard disk, and because SONAR is built more as a studio tool than a live tool, I don’t expect it to be a Live killer. But if you’re happy with the SONAR workflow and want to try out ideas in its environment, it could still be useful. (Cakewalk’s Project5 went a similar route, with similar results.) It’s just about the only copy I’ve seen of Ableton’s Session View, and it really does feel like a copy, so for that reason it’s probably the change I’m least interested in in SONAR. I do think there are other features here that are far more original, though.

You get strips for working with vocals and drums. For vocals, the VX-64 is a combination tube-emulation mic pre + de-esser + compressor/expander + tube EQ + doubler + delay + output strip, which I already loved after seeing it bundled with the VS-100 hardware. For drums, the PX-64 is a combination pre + transient shaper + compressor + expander + contour EQ + delay + output strip – so, roughly the same thing, with some drum-specific tweaks. Cakewalk has done a lovely job with these strips, and they could be the sort of thing that justifies SONAR’s investment. I can’t imagine not liking the PX-64 having enjoyed the VX-64, both for its audio quality and the ease of drag-and-drop routings.

Why you may finally go 64-bit. The BitBridge XR plug-in not only lets your 32-bit plug-ins work on the 64-bit operating system, but gives each of them 4 GB of RAM for up to 128 GB of RAM. That’s possible on the Mac side with Apple’s Logic – but only with its sampler, not with third-party plug-ins. And SONAR ships with a lot of 64-bit plug-ins in the box, not to mention that major vendors like Native Instruments are providing support.

Improved performance, Windows 7 ready. You can now hotswap audio and MIDI interfaces without restarting, and audio and stability are improved. And when you do get the Windows 7 upgrade – which, based on my research so far, you will want to do from either XP or Vista – SONAR has been rigorously tested. I don’t want to just repeat that without supporting evidence, though, so stay tuned for a separate story.

I still don’t think SONAR is for everyone – though, of course, I don’t really think anything is for everyone. (That’s the marketing people’s job, to claim that one product solves everyone’s problems.) Sitting in front of SONAR’s interface can still feel like getting into a jumbo jet cockpit. The Matrix View is not – and is apparently not intended to be – a replacement for Ableton Live’s live performance features. Open as SONAR is, I think it has new competition from the extensible architecture of Reaper. And, of course, all of this is meaningless to Mac users – though I hasten to add, while the Mac faces a tough 64-bit transition ahead, Windows users can grab SONAR, clean install 64-bit Windows 7, and possibly barely notice anything at all aside from a whole bunch of gobs of memory.

But I’ll say this: it’s funny how a few subtle changes can change how you think, but the combination of brilliant effects, this ridiculously-powerful step sequencer, and the possibility that AudioSnap really nails audio manipulation has me taking a second look at SONAR. Expect more details later this fall. (I’ll be writing this up for CDM and not Macworld for obvious reasons.)

Upgrades for existing SONAR 8 users are US$79 (Studio) – US$99 (Producer). If you purchased SONAR after July 1, the upgrade is free. For new users, SONAR is $499 for the Producer edition with the extra effects and instruments, or $299 for Studio without them. (But, really, I think you want the Z3TA+ synth; you’ll just have to trust me on that.)

In pointing out Behringer’s clone of Apple’s homepage, I may have left some things unclear. I was honestly surprised to find a number of people rushing to Behringer’s defense. I wasn’t trying to score cheap and easy points against the brand, but while venting frustration, I may have underestimated the response of people who own Behringer gear. If you do, and it’s working for you, as always – that’s a good thing.

The conversation got me excited, and I stepped into the comment fray. I shouldn’t have in this case, and unless asked to, I’ll stay out of this conversation. I enjoy being involved in those threads, but there are times when I should keep my writing to this space and let you have at it in the space below – the one labeled “comments.”

I think the reason Behringer inflames some people boils down to two things. Those people may have been burned by gear that proved not to be a bargain, or offended by a history of gear designs copied from recognizable models, or both. The former, of course, can happen with any vendor, but it does illustrate that saving money doesn’t always save time or money. Caveat Emptor is therefore true with any vendor. The latter is really the sticking point. Here’s a loose timeline of the cases in question:

Behringer and Mackie: In 1997, Mackie sued not only Behringer but distributor Samson and retailer Sam Ash. Mackie claimed that Behringer mixers were intended as exact copies of Mackie mixers – not only of external look and feel, but circuit design and individual components. In 1999, Behringer and Samson claimed a decision by the US Copyright Office “vindicated” the company. That supposed vindication is fairly empty, however. The US Copyright Office didn’t say that Behringer’s circuit designs were original. Instead, they said that the circuit board designs weren’t covered by the US Copyright Office. That has more to do with peculiarities of US intellectual property law than it does a vindication of Behringer.

Behringer and Roland/BOSS: In 2005, Roland sued Behringer for duplicating the look and feel of its guitar pedals. The blog Music Thing had a nice visual of just what this looked like. In this case, there was no claim about underlying circuit design, but the look and feel or “trade dress” is covered legally. Again, Behringer was not exactly vindicated. The two companies reached a settlement. The terms remained confidential, but Behringer did modify the look of its pedals.

Behringer and Line 6: What’s more disturbing to me is that, after reaching a legal settlement with Roland, Behringer simply moved on to a different vendor. In 2007, Behringer introduced a new line of pedals copying Line 6 instead of BOSS. Again, Music Thing’s Tom Whitwell did a visual comparison. Less extreme, but demonstrating Behringer continues to try to steal Line 6 market share by looking like Line 6, even the prize for the web design competition (the V-AMP) is intended to clone Line 6’s POD.

These are not the only cases of Behringer products that are designed to look like someone else’s products. As noted in comments, even the screenshot of the Behringer website is of monitors intended to look like those from KRK. Part of why I’m taking up the Behringer stories is that Music Thing isn’t around to do it any more, but here are some of Tom’s best hits:

In 2006, Behringer again copied Mackie, answering Mackie’s ONYX with mixers-plus-digital-I/O called the XENYX. (They copied the look and feel of older Mackie mixers rather than newer ones, but this was also clearly intended to look like Mackie’s product.)

Some amount of cloning, of course, should be forgiven – it’s expected practice for software emulations to mimic the look and feel of classic analog gear, so I can’t really fault Behringer for that. (That said, of course, I still think there’s far too much of that, and far too little original thinking about how to lay out controls and design interfaces.) The difference between cloning a classic product and a currently-shipping product is that making something look like something else that you can buy new suggests you want to create confusion. There are laws around that – “trade dress” – but more importantly to me is the question of whether it’s ethical.

Please, if, in comments, you want to fill out this timeline or offer more details of each case, on either side, I’m happy to hear it.

Apple and Behringer: In the case of the Apple site, while I wish websites in general would stop cloning Apple’s design – good as it may be – Behringer crossed a line by copying product pages, the color weight, gradient values, pixel weights, and radius of the Apple site. My small images in the story didn’t do that justice. This is not about the “cult of Apple.” Let me make myself plain: please, stop making sites look like the Apple site. Behringer’s case I think was worse than most, but I’d be happy if other sites flirted less with some of the particulars of Apple’s designs. Apple’s solution is not always the “best” design solution. There are others.

(Side note: the basics of Apple’s current website design really have been tremendously influential – so much so that it’s easy to overlook how much of this is derived from Apple. The earliest version of the current look dates from around 1997. But you can be influenced by a design and make it your own, rather than copying every detail or copying every detail poorly. To pretend otherwise would be to say design doesn’t matter, and I can’t do that.)

Let’s consider the larger issues:

Cheap can be great. One thing I won’t do is discriminate against musicians because what they’re using is cheap. “Ghetto fabulous” I believe is the proper term. Far from that, I hope on CDM we can find every opportunity to champion finding ways of doing cool stuff with cheap things. However…

Cheaper doesn’t always save you money. Because value is important, because you’re on a budget, you don’t want to throw your money away. Assume for a moment the allegations that Behringer cloned Mackie’s mixers down to individual circuits and components were true. That still doesn’t cover issues like manufacturing quality assurance or support. Larger than any one vendor – Behringer or otherwise – we urgently need to consider value. We can’t afford disposable gear. Our musical electronics are made out of toxic materials, and they impact the environment as they’re made, shipped, and disposed. And we need them to last for our music, too. I’m certainly guilty of having made this mistake, but it’s something that – as a community – we can all do better. Again, perhaps you have a good relationship with Behringer gear, which is great.

Copying is good; plagiarism, not so much. There’s a huge benefit to making copies and improving on them. A certain amount of copying is part of design. There is a difference, however, if the copy is intended to create confusion, to substitute for something else dishonestly. It’s the difference between Kia competing with the Honda Accord, as mentioned in comments, and someone making a car that looks exactly like an Accord called the Monda Schmaccord, and steals the design of its drivetrain. Likewise, in music, sampling can be a beautiful thing. Taking someone else’s work and trying to pass it off as your own is something different.

I believe it’s essential to draw these lines. It’s only going to get tougher from here. If you think these isolated Behringer cases were bad, brace yourselves: an army of music technology cloning companies is waiting in the wings.

My plea to Behringer: kick your copying habit, if you can. I could forgive you if you didn’t keep doing it over and over again. That suggests to me, and many others, that it’s malicious, that you hope consumers won’t notice and will buy your cheaper version because, cosmetically, it looks the same as something else. If it really is different, and if it really is better, then that only makes this more of a tragedy.

I’m going to leave the Behringer discussion at this point, having provided some of the historical background. But I certainly won’t let go of these other issues. And the uprising of Behringer support says to me that CDM and I do need to spend more time talking about affordable gear, affordable software, and — not necessarily because it’s “cheap” or “free” — free and open source hardware and software. I welcome your suggestions.

It’s hard out there for a hardware synth. There are all these new-fangled soft synths, capable of producing radical sounds via easy-to-navigate on-screen interfaces. I have a very very short mental list of hardware synths that still matter to me for one reason or another – and the Roland V-Synth GT is one that keeps coming back. I had access to one temporarily for a review. It was like temporarily adopting a puppy. You try not to get too close to the thing, as you know you can’t keep it. The V-Synth is likely out of the budget of a lot of readers of this site, but it’s worth just knowing it’s there, and why it has become so beloved by sound design aficionados.

The V-Synth GT, itself a big upgrade from the original V-Synth, had a major software upgrade this summer that flew under a lot of people’s radar. But now as the days are getting shorter again and people are starting to think sound design, I hope we can give the V-Synth GT some attention as an instrument. It has inspired me even in my software work, just to see the perspective of the engineers at Roland and how the device is programmed.

First, a few notes about what the V-Synth GT is about – something I’m sure you’d like explained, given its US$3000 street price.

The experience of using the V-Synth is really different from a lot of the synths out there. You don’t get this sense of the excess of some of the workstations, the stuff you don’t need. You just get a whole bunch of toys for sound design, which combine in unusual ways that feel really playable but can also be warped to produce far-out results:

• Its AP “Articulative Phrase” synthesis method is really unusual, mimicing the organic qualities of how instruments respond in attack, note transition, and tuning. That’s fascinating enough, but the ability to get at some of these AP principles and create hybrid instruments is what makes the GT worth using.
• The COSM models of favorite vintage Roland gear are decent enough on their own, but the ability to combine them in semi-modular routings helps the GT shine.
• You can manipulate audio on the device in some unique ways, with real-time pitch and tempo stretching of loops and phrases, which can then be resampled. Okay, sure, your copy of Ableton Live can do this, but the experience of doing it on hardware – alongside the other V-Synth synthesis features – is unique.
• It samples external sources, which you can edit on the touchscreen, and routes external audio through onboard effects, including the Vocal Designer vocoder / voice modeler.
• It has lots of control, from the easy-to-navigate color screen to D-Beam controller and the signature X/Y pad.

In other words, it’s really a Roland synth studio in a box. My 2007 review for Keyboard Magazine explains what all of this is like in practice.

From the software perspective, the V-Synth embodies a lot of what I admire about Roland. “Articulative Phrase” synthesis really isn’t a synthesis method in the conventional sense – it’s fair to say it’s a collection of tricks they’ve developed for making their instruments sound good. But coming from the hardware background, working in extreme memory constraints we no longer consider on computers, they’ve had to use tremendous economy with their sound designs. And rather than focusing on a “press a button” approach to sound, they’ve really built responsiveness and change into all of the onboard controllers, something that software sound programmers could, frankly, use.

So, that’s the V-Synth GT as released. But the V-Synth has gotten some significant updates, including 64-bit drivers for Windows and, most importantly, a massive 2.0 OS update.

2.0: More Sounds, More Sampling, More Sound Design

• Import WAV and AIFF directly from USB key, making this more useful as a sample manipulator
• More sounds: Two new sound sets, new patches combining the V-Synth’s various sound shaping abilities, and a third sound set that’s a collection of vintage analog synths from various makers – including the entire Roland back catalog
• More sound design options: new arpeggiation styles, new step modulator templates, and effects ported from the Fantom G

Demo video from Roland, via Synthtopia:

Who’s Using It

I recently spoke to Roland’s Dan Krisher about the V-Synth. His thoughts:

There are many uses for the V-Synth GT, but the V-Synth GT has been exceptionally embraced by the sound design community.  For example, Richard Devine creates sample libraries, from drum loops to intricate soundscapes, and the V-Synth GT is one of his main tools.  The way the menus are built, it is very easy to get started making unique sounds right away.  Players aren’t limited to the sounds inside the V-Synth GT either—any instrument can be plugged directly into the V-Synth GT.  The instrument’s signal can be run through the GT’s synth AND effects engines.

Another popular use for the V-Synth GT is for people who are just looking for a huge-sounding synth to play live.  There are a wealth of real-time controllers such as the D-Beam and front-panel knobs, that allow you to tweak sound in real time.  The Vocal designer allows players to add to a vocal performance with harmonies on a whole different level than was possible before.

Now, of course, this is the usual spiel you get from hardware makers, but this is one of the cases in which my anecdotal experience with users backs up what he’s saying.

Dan also said that the 2.0 update really grew out of user feedback, which makes sense. The V-Synth GT doesn’t get as much attention as a lot of other synths out there – even Roland themselves tend to focus more on their Fantom and JUNO – but the V-Synth’s user base, both users of the original and the GT, is really fiercely loyal.

V-Synth GT Videos

There are some really quite amusing videos of the V-Synth GT out there. Now, don’t necessarily judge the sound of the synth from all of these videos – I was able to push it in ways that didn’t sound like conventional Roland synth sounds, too. (And no, I don’t know why some marketing videos – not the ones I’m listing here, but you know who you are – have to be so cheezy.)

Updated: To really get a sense of the extraordinary sounds that can come out of the V-Synth series, you need to watch the 2003 debut video of the original V-Synth at NAMM. Six years later, nothing in hardware has touched this. And keep in mind, the GT has added a lot of sonic tools that the original didn’t have, so imagine this going even further. (Thanks to James Y for finding this, and Roland, please let’s see more videos like this!)

Is there a word for ear-dropping? (And this is YouTube audio quality…)

Tatsuya Nishiwaki, hilariously, confesses he can’t resist turning the V-Synth into an electric guitar as he does other synths, and then parties like it’s 1989. That name will be familiar to fans of Japanese music – he’s a major keyboard player in Japan, along with working with some big names here Stateside, after starting as a founding member of the band PAZZ. (More videos, direct from Roland.)

The best place to get a sense of the V-Synth GT in action is to watch Jordan Rudess playing it:

Jordan Rudess V-Synth GT Demos, Roland Video Library

Rudess is a tremendously skilled player, but there is a certain conventional sound to Roland keyboards here and, perhaps even more so, in the other demos. You’ll just have to take my word for it that if you abuse some combinations of sounds, you can take the V-Synth in another direction. Here’s what the interface looks like, again via Synthtopia. Now just imagine turning knobs past the places you’re supposed to, and routing things wrong!

And, because we can laugh at what we love, one comic strip, drawn for the awesome blog Wire to the Ear by the site’s creator, Oliver Chesler:

Funny and true – but only if you’re just trying to sound like a Jupiter-8. The nice thing about the V-Synth is that it really can sound unlike anything else, once properly pushed out of its comfortable preset zone to its extremes.

V-Synth GT Users?

One V-Synth user talks about the synth’s ability to produce “wild sounds” and demonstrates some of his own creations on YouTube. He concludes – news to me – that “I do not understan why owners are selling them for $800.”

Umm… Actually, yeah. The V-Synth is really, really awful. You don’t want it. You want to sell it to me for $800, or even less. (Maybe these are users of the original upgrading to the GT, so desperate to get the new model they’re unloading the original dirt cheap?)

I really can imagine the V-Synth GT as a desert island hardware synth. I’m curious to hear from users of either the V-Synth or V-Synth GT. Got sound design techniques you’ve discovered? Raves – or rants – you’d like to pass along to Roland?

Let us know.

And yeah, I know – now that I’ve done this, we need someone to write a love ode to Kyma.

V-Synth GT [warning – Roland annoyingly makes their websites make lots of noise without asking]

2.0 Update Download

The iPhone has become an almost absurdly-popular platform for music apps this year, even given more capable, more plentiful PCs. But to those who don’t yet “get” the appeal, talk to a mobile music addict: having the ability to be creatively musically in corners of time that would otherwise go unused, like a cramped bus ride, can be a beautiful thing. (Now, you start talking about taking away my PC/Mac experience, and I will start screaming in agony – but that’s a topic for a separate post.) The question is, what form should that app take? Today, I’ve got an iPhone round-up going as I clear out my news inbox, but that thread lies beneath all the stories…

I’m working on putting together a collection of truly productive, non-gimmicky/non-toy music apps now that the platform is maturing. But two apps released this week I think deserve special mention, and mention together – partly because of the different angle they take.

They’re both essentially handheld grooveboxes. They’re both relatively powerful, bringing desktop-style production to the platform. They’re both good options, and at this price, you might go buy both. But as I go off to test these two apps, I’m already struck by the contrast between the two.

One is the kind of app that we’re seeing a whole lot of on the iPhone, just as we once saw it in me-too apps on desktop computers. It assumes that the way to reach more people is to give them a whole bunch of canned loops that already sound like the styles they might want to play, and assume they’ll be pretty limited in their ability to do much with those loops.

The other of the two apps eschews the obligatory audio loops for real synthesis, and strips out the usual “let’s try to look like hardware” interface for something a lot more minimal and (I think) touch device friendly. That’s a design lesson that might well be applied beyond the iPhone, too.

First, consider the looped audio approach.

From IK Multimedia, GrooveMaker is a real-time app for manipulating audio loops. Interestingly, IK brought it over from the Mac/PC software. There are some powerful features, real-time control over audio, WiFi upload to your computer. It’s all well and good, so far.

The problem is that GrooveMaker is yet another app that assumes the only way people can have fun is to start with a bunch of canned loops and genres. GrooveMaker comes with hundreds of loops in house, hip-hop, and club styles. But that’s it – there’s no way to really easily start a track from scratch. (Update: Note that I should say you can at least sequence from scratch, but only with the stock content – which would have made GrooveMaker bigger news on this platform were it not for the release of iDrum and BeatMaker first.)

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-sample. It’s not my own working style because it just doesn’t inspire me, but that’s a personal feeling, and not one I’d impose on anyone else. In fact, some of my best friends (ahem) are capable of doing things with sampled loops that blow my mind. The problem I have is with lowest-common-denominator thinking. In fact, I think synthesized tracks, tracks that give you real control over the sound, are often more fun for beginners.

Take, for instance, Smule. As founder Ge Wang discussed with CDM, their Ocarina and Leaf Trombone app are aimed really at non-musicians. But because these instruments use synthesized sound, people are free to really play with them and make whatever noise with them they like, rather than getting stuck with canned sounds to “remix.”

Now, perhaps a future version of GrooveMaker will make it easier to bring in other audio. Even then, it’ll have a lot of catching up to do with Intua’s far more powerful BeatMaker having been on the market for some time and offering features like integration with noise.io’s soft synth. But let’s talk for a moment about the flexibility of synthesis.

More Funner, with Synths?

bleep!BOX takes a different approach. Now, there have already been some 808 and 909 emulations on the iPhone. But you really have to see this instrument in action. Creator David Wallin has done some interesting work to make lots of sound parameters accessible.

David writes us:

I wanted to drop you a line to let you know that my iPhone groove box app is finally approved and live in the app store. It features 10 drum/synth parts (808 / 909 emulations of snares, hihats, etc and 4x 2-Oscillator analog synth parts). All sounds are generated realtime and are highly tweakable – no samples are used.

Compare the results: with the canned loop, you get something that sounds good right away – though it also sound predictable. It then actually requires a fair amount of effort to make that sound your own, if you succeed at all.

Using synthesized sound, on the other hand, you initially get, well, nothing at all. But you can very quickly get to something you’ve created yourself, even if your skill level isn’t all that high.

That’s an oversimplification, of course, but I think it’s at least born out in the design philosophies here; bleep!BOX allows the user to be more constructive than passive. (Audio manipulation techniques are capable of some tricks all their own – especially when you get into time manipulation and granular resynthesis. But that’s just the means to the end. There’s a difference between synthesizing music and consuming – or even passively remixing – music.)

I’m looking forward to spending some time with bleep!BOX as a sketchpad for beats. I’ll be interested to see how it might evolve to allow easier integration with desktop music workflows.

But notice what you can do with synthesized sounds – you can actually play. I think this is part of what made the Korg DS-10 such a smash hit on the Nintendo DS, even given the DS’ extremely constrained audio fidelity. (The iPhone – and, incidentally, Sony’s PSP – fare much better.)

Whether you’re a beginner or advanced user, “play” and expression are really what it’s about. A kazoo, for instance, doesn’t have canned sounds. It doesn’t come with presets. It can, frankly, embarrass you. But it’s fun to play, because you can feel a certain amount of freedom with it.

Ironically, I think it actually requires a fairly advanced user to have that kind of freedom with pre-canned loops. Aiming at a “lowest common denominator” is too often disparaged, when it can really mean aiming at a large public.

But maybe the reason “lowest common denominator” gets a bad name is that more advanced tools are often more fun. I’d love to see more work done on synthesized sound that’s really fun to play with.

The choice is yours, naturally. The two instruments:

http://www.groovemaker.com/
http://www.bleepboxapp.com/

So, iPhone/iPod touch users – now that the novelty has worn off, have you found apps you continue to use over time?

And, since you do come to CDM for opinions, anyone care to disagree with my take (or nod approvingly)?

Octopus transmute!

I can’t in good conscience fail to mention the JUNO-60 video uploaded to the Roland How Do You Juno contest. The work of UTM, you have love that (a) it’s a video of the legendary JUNO-60, the original, analog JUNO, and (b) all those gorgeous flying imaginary graphics. Clarification: I should say that the JUNO has an all-analog signal chain. That is, the oscillators are digitally-clocked DCOs and get digital patch storage, but everything else is analog. So it’s more analog than the JUNOs sold by Roland now. And by “original,” yes, the 60 was an update of the JUNO-6.

Yeah, that’s what we’d label the parameters, too, given complete freedom.

From YouTube:

This is my entry in the How Do You JUNO? YouTube™ Video Contest. All audio was created and performed on my quarter-century-old, pre-MIDI, analog Juno-60 synth. Computer Museum Photo: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

UTM says he’s a CDM reader, as well, so additional bonus points for that.

Deep thought: who wants to build a CV to OSC converter, and we can really pretend like MIDI never happened? (Apologies, Dave Smith.)

See also Robbie Ryan’s JUNO song. Like, with lyrics.

Getting DIY ads out of YouTube is all the rage these days, but when it comes to certain time-tested synth names, let’s just say the audience is a little different. You love the gear, you make music with the gear, you praise everything that’s brilliant and you’re unafraid of criticizing what’s not. We covered the Roland “How Do You JUNO” contest launch back in April with a look back at the JUNO line through the years. Check out comments for some frank, nostalgia-immune commentary from synth geeks about the high points and low points of the various models. And so, we wind up, oddly enough, with high-production-value ads for even vintage Rolands like this Alpha Juno 2. (Hmmmm… maybe Roland should have set up an eBay affiliate account).

If anyone doubted it, there’s no question: even in the age of computer soft synths, keyboards are beloved items. The video at top is — well, pretty crazy, as you can see for yourself. Check out the crew they put together to make it after the jump.

You still have time to submit your own video to the contest, JUNO owners, if you haven’t already. The entries end tonight, Tuesday, at midnight.

Roland How Do You JUNO Contest Page
YouTube video group with the competition

Voting starts tomorrow (Wednesday) on that same contest page.

If any CDM readers have submitted videos you want to point our way, we can help you rig the contest because we love you um, get the word out.

Disclosure: Roland has generously sponsored CDM for this contest. That allows us to keep the servers humming and to have the unique pleasure of shamelessly pimping discontinued Roland keyboards from the 1980s. (I still want to see what some of you are doing with the V-Synth, which is my favorite current Roland model, but that’ll have to be a separate contest.)

This is my entry to the “This is How I Juno” contest where I explain the many unique features of my Roland Alpha Juno-2.

Producer, Editor, Sound Designer/Editor, Co-Writer, Lead Actor: Henry Borchers
Director, VFX Supervisor, Co-Writer, Actor, Associate Fight Coordinator, Stunt Double: Erik Kjonaas

Extra Special thanks to Alex Champion and the rest of the crew.

Alex Champion: Boom Operator, Voice Actor, Grip

Alex Rott: Fight Coordinator, Stunt Double, Voice Actor, Grip, Sound FX Assistant:

Ben Mayer: Key Grip

Brett Schilke: Sound FX Assistant

Thanks for the helpful participation of Jonathan Fung

For more music by Henry Borchers, please check out www.myspace.com/henryborchers

Previously:
Roland Wants Videos of Junos New and Old; A Look Back at the Juno Line
Keyboard Geeking Day: Roland Answers JUNO Questions, plus 2.0 Sampling on JUNO-G

The Roland JUNO-G has attracted some interest from CDM readers since I mentioned Roland’s YouTube contest and talked a bit about the JUNO line’s history. (See previous story.)

One of you by the name of “made” even asked comments addressed “Dear Roland.” I had to admit I was curious about those answers, so Roland responded.

The JUNO-G feature a lot of readers wondered about was the onboard sampling functionality. That feature was beefed up in the OS 2.0. Personally, I’m still looking to keep my samples on the software side, but I can see this having some appeal for live performance. With 2.0, you can sample onboard, which could make the JUNO-G an interesting “live-PA”-style synth, a hardware unit with some sample savvy, and/or a way to supplement your laptop in gigs.

New 2.0 features as described by Roland:

• Sample audio from external sources or import audio phrases from the removable flash memory.
• Samples can be assigned to trigger from the JUNO-G’s function buttons or the JUNO-G’s keyboard.
• Velocity and note number can be assigned individually for each sample.
• Adjust Start, End and Loop points using the JUNO-G’s front panel control knobs.
• Advanced sampling editing such as Truncate, Normalize, Emphases, Sample Chop and Combine are included.
• Samples can automatically match BPM in real-time to changes made to the tempo of your song.

To download JUNO-G Version 2.0 software upgrade, please visit:
http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?dsection=d_downloads&ObjectId=756

Now, onto the tips, which come from Roland’s Eric Klein.

Maintaining Sustain:

The Juno-G can maintain its sustain when changing patches, as long as Patch Remain is turned on (it’s off by default).
1. Press MENU, select System, and press ENTER.
2. Press F1 (GENERL).
3. Press F1 (Common).
4. Turn Patch Remain on and press F6 (WRITE).

Note that only the raw patch itself will transition smoothly; the effects engine will change to best compliment the new patch, and there will be a short glitch when this happens. The Fantom-G is the only keyboard on the planet with perfectly seamless patch–and–effects changes (and then only in Live mode). If you want perfectly seamless patch changes in the Juno-G, you must turn the effects off.

If the sustain is working backwards; that is, it sustains when not depressed but stops when pressed, this means its polarity is opposite that of the Juno-G. No worries–you can change that:

1. Press MENU, select System, and press ENTER.
2. Press F2 (KBD/CTRL).
3. Press F2 (PEDAL).
4. Turn Hold Pedal Polarity to Reverse and press F6 (WRITE). If the sustain isn’t working *at all*, it’s most likely an incompatible sustain pedal. We use the Roland DP-2, DP-8, and DP-10 here.

Ed.: I have both Roland and Yamaha pedals at home, and tried the Yamaha damper without any incident, just FYI. –PK

JUNO-G as Sampler:

The Juno’s G’s audio tracks have always utilized a powerful RAM-based sampling engine, and clever users noted that any audio file recorded into the keyboard could be manually assigned to a patch or rhythm set’s key(s) from the Pro Edit screen. Basically, it was hidden. With the new Juno-G OS 2.0, the sampling engine is right at your fingertips and any samples can easily be assigned to keys or to the buttons below the Juno-G’s screen. A fully-loaded Juno-G can store and play back up to 51 stereo or 102 mono minutes of samples and audio tracks. Samples can be manipulated with the Juno-G’s myriad synth parameters–filters, effects, envelopes, LFOs… There’s even realtime timestretch, so any sampled loops will automatically follow the song’s tempo, without changing pitch. It’s certainly a proper studio sampler.

"Can you trigger sequenced patterns from one part of a keyboard split while playing synth sounds on another?”

The Juno-G’s rhythm patterns can be triggered from the six buttons below the screen, and they can be either heavily modified or created from scratch via step sequencing. Layered/split performances can be played from the keyboard simultaneously.

If one really wants to trigger sequenced patterns from the keys, an entire song can be resampled as an audio file and be assigned to a key within a rhythm set. That rhythm set can be confined to, say, the bottom octave of the keyboard. The flexibility of the Juno-G is really remarkable.

Thanks for the answers, Eric.

If you think today’s “talk to the manufacturers” is in any way inspired by the fact that I’m busy at the OFFF conference in Portugal, you’re right. But it’s wound up leading to some interesting discussions, so I’m open to doing it again, with any makes or models you wish. (And we’ll be doing some open source/DIY Q&A soon, too, so this isn’t just limited to vendors. These are all tools we rely on, so I know they’re important.)

Roland is holding a YouTube video contest to get people to show off their JUNO keyboard synths. They’re not just talking the currently-available Roland keyboards that wear the JUNO badge, but the classic models going back to 1982.

"How Do You JUNO?" Video Contest [Roland US]

I like to disclose our partnerships upfront, so in the interest of disclosure: Roland US is currently promoting this campaign on CDM – thanks, Roland, for supporting the site. I can also tell you that personally, selfishly, I’d really love to see some great JUNO videos up on that YouTube channel, and that I suspect the take of some of you readers will be different. Also in the interest of really full disclosure – yeah, okay, I’m partial to the vintage JUNO. That’s my own personal bias. But I’m eager to see videos of whatever you’ve got. (Also, the JUNO-G is one of my favorite mainstream keyboards at the moment, for reasons I talk about below – it has the advantages of a workstation, like the ability to load custom waveforms and do onboard audio recording and sequencing, but without some of the bells and whistles a lot of us don’t want.)

Right now, there’s not a whole lot uploaded to the YouTube video. The contest just started, and you have until July 1. But I’d like to see some more from the CDM readers – especially after you successfully conquered Keyboard Magazine’s Depeche Mode identify-the-gear competition last month. Prizes this time include a new, loaded JUNO-Stage to the top three winners, plus two SRX expansion boards of your choice to the top winner. I can kick in a beer if I see you, plus international fame here on CDM if you do something great – and that extends beyond the US borders. (The contest itself is US-only as it’s run by Roland US.)

JUNO History

I think it’s worth reviewing the history of the JUNO line. What it’s meant to be a “JUNO” has changed pretty radically over the years; a JUNO-D and a JUNO-6 might not recognize each other. It reflects some of the changing tastes and technologies in the industry. Sometimes that represents forward progress — hooray, MIDI and patch memory! But sometimes something is lost. The analog original is something special, and even Roland wound up bringing back retro-styled front-panel editing, missing on the JUNO-D, to the JUNO-G and JUNO-STAGE. It’s not about nostalgia: it’s about making something musically productive. In some ways, that’s brought us full circle.

1982: JUNO-6, JUNO-60. The original JUNO was a six-voice polyphonic analog synth. The distinctive, punchy analog sound was so beloved, it even inspired a meticulous emulation on a dedicated Linux machine. It also introduced Roland’s friendly-looking panel layout approach with big, clear labels and a spacious setup – something to which Roland themselves have recently returned. The JUNO-60 added patch memory storage. No MIDI, although there Roland later produced add-on hardware for MIDI control.

1984: JUNO-106. The 106 has a special place in history, not only a favorite of the 80s but ever since – it’s got six analog voices as on the original JUNO, plus one digitally-controlled oscillator per voice, but adds MIDI control. It sounds great and it’s dead-simple to use. It’s also a nice choice if you’re looking to pick up an 80s keyboard as it’s a good value today as it was when released. In a world in which “vintage” often translates to elite and expensive, the JUNO-106 is one of the great populist keyboards of all time. Note that if you are looking to pick up a used 106, our friend James Grahame from Retro Thing notes tells me the voice chips are starting to die. Buyer beware: owning a used synth can be like owning a used car.

The Roland Jupiter, not the JUNO, went down in history as one of the two first synths to connect in public via MIDI – at winter NAMM, January 1983, connected to a Sequential Prophet-600. But the JUNO-106 was still one of the Roland products that helped popularize MIDI.

1986: Alpha JUNO 1. The Alphas are smaller, and eschew physical controls for LED and minimalist button selections – there was something about the mid-1980s that did that to synth design. But you can add on a PG-300 controller for additional controls, the Alphas are MIDI-friendly, and not hard to find these days. They maintained the distinctive JUNO sound and have been a favorite in the techno scene ever since.

Alpha JUNO 2. The Alpha 2 hits a nice sweet spot as a controller: aftertouch, 61-note keyboard. That could make it a decent choice on your keyboard rack even today.

The New JUNO Models

2005: JUNO-D. The JUNO-D is a budget wavetable synth, and as such, really the odd man out here. The connection to the original JUNO is presumably that it’s a friendly synth with some favorite sounds, and it does support a computer editor. There are also front-panel envelope controls. But it’s the more recent JUNO models that have brought back more of the original spirit of the JUNO. The JUNO-D has “JUNO” printed on it, but otherwise, while a solid entry-level keyboard, it lacks a lot of the features that make the other modern JUNO line appealing.

2007: JUNO-G. The JUNO-G is quite a lot more interesting if you’re interested in doing some real programming and live performance. It’s a workstation, though without some of the arranger features that are superfluous to many of us. You get the Fantom-X synth processor, but with easily-accessible front-panel editing controls and a layout inspired by the original JUNO. There are also some nice gigging features, like onboard audio/MIDI recording, 16-part MIDI sequencing, and a slot for flash memory. It’s also got additional controller features, like a D-Beam, plus USB connectivity. I reviewed the JUNO-G in summer 2007 for Keyboard Magazine. I was especially attracted to the ability to use your own waveforms as the basis of sounds, and to the front-panel editing and sequencing/recording features.

Version 2 of the JUNO-G recently added waveform editing.

2008: JUNO-STAGE. I quite liked that the JUNO-G is light, but the JUNO-STAGE gives you a 76-note, semi-weighted keyboard and additional performance controls. It gets rid of some of the sequencing and workstation features of the JUNO-G, but if you want to do all your sequencing on computer, that may not matter. The idea of the STAGE is really focused on live performance controls. Like the JUNO-G, it’s the soul of a Fantom-X in a different package, but that package is more narrowly-focused in a way that can appeal for live playing.

Modern JUNO Portal at Roland

JUNO Users, We’d Love to Hear From You

An informal poll reveals there are some JUNO owners – new and vintage – out there in CDMland. So I’m actually quite interested to hear what these results might be like. I’d love to hear your actual music and learn how you use these in the studio or live.

Hopefully in the future, we can extend this to other popular gear, as well.

Drum machine lovers, you now have the beat gear equivalent of Matt Harding and Where the Hell is Matt?. Kamoni, aka sonic creator, composer, and experimenter Micah Frank, takes his favorite devices out on the road, piecing them together into an epic YouTubular jam.

Doepfer and Korg, Elektron and Akai, plus a lot of other devices make their way around New York and Brooklyn and other parts of the world. Ableton I think figured into editing the video clips in time — thank you, Live, for video. I could point out individual devices, but then I’d ruin your fun, wouldn’t I?

Of course, this could be both emulated and expanded. We could perform a single rhythm, played by MPC and Machinedrum owners around the planet. (You could even get that laptop running on battery.)

I can see it now. Internets, go!

And yes, this does demonstrate where puremagnetik gets all those beats for their line of sampled things. Micah gets his hands on a lot of gear.

Updated: Replaced with a Vimeo link. Google seems to be having a bad week. We like Vimeo better for videos, anyway.

Plushy soft replicas of beloved synths have become something of a meme. Via our friend atariboy of Plasq fame, here’s the latest addition to the cuddly vintage instrument category on Etsy. Think about what this means, if you will: it’s a synthesizer you can curl up with while you sleep. Now that’s love. (I know at least a few of you have a relationship with synths that rivals or replaces, erm, significant others…)

Now, the last time I covered soft synths (cough), I got significant hate mail in comments, proving there are really some people who don’t enjoy joy. But let’s get serious: the issue here is, you really do want these things to make some noise. Maybe it won’t be a fully-accurate Korg MS-20 emulation, but it could at least make some blips and bleeps. Squeezing circuitry into something soft and fuzzy is not an easy chore, but soft circuits are becoming more manageable — it’s even possible to use conductive thread to do basic wiring. A simple resistive, noise-making circuit is possible.

Consider the gauntlet thrown. Any plushy makers want to collaborate?

On Etsy:
Pulsewidth shop, currently with a Minimoog, a Roland Juno-106, Korg MS-20, and a couple of SH-101s.

Previously:
TR-808: The Pillow, Plus Other Soft Synths